I like this image, but I do think it would be more striking without the boys in the foreground.

I think the shot is cool! But I agree about the foreground boys. I do lots of street shooting, and I know how it works...if you wait for the boys to leave the frame, they don't; instead, the great figure leaning on the fountain leaves first!

Agree with two of points already made and re-made: excellent picture, but I'm interested to know what it looks like with the figures bisected by the lower edge removed. The picture seems to have just the right kind of "air" in it, as well as beautifully handled grisaille. The play of the optical space against the architectural space, foregrounded by the irregularly positioned girl, is one of the kinds of pictorial pleasure that is always activated on viewing.

Are you guys kidding? The boys at the bottom of the frame make it. Without them it becomes almost an abstract, and a much less human and much more ambiguous scene.

Their interest in something outside the frame adds a new element of the unknown, and their total indifference to the scene immediately behind them has a couple of effects, all good. We're pretty sure the figure in the fountain isn't dead, and hasn't fallen there -- we're quite sure now that the figure is digging around in the fountain, for reasons blessedly unknown. Their indifference also lends a frisson of the surreal to the image, another layer of 'what the hell, now? what?'

The boys set the scene as "probably a mall or something" rather than god knows where, where, without context, we have no notion of what the fountain could be, or why the figure could be in that position.

Street is, for me, about combining things we understand and know, a context in which we feel comfortable, with elements of mystery and narrative. Without the boys we lose most of those pieces, in this one.

For me, the departing lads at the bottom of frame are pretty much the subject of the photograph and the fountain and playing figure are the background. It is the bisection of the guys that, in my reading of the image, elevate the image to transcend the mundane record and create narrative.

This is strange; I find absolutely no need for the knowledge of what they are all doing.

To me, photographs are what they are, and if you seek messages send a text - you'll probably get one back. It's not too clever to explain the actuality of things within one's shot: someone, a while back, posted a very interesting night photograph of some party girls in a window, and the moment that he replied to a posted question about it, it died the death. Leave it to the viewer's imagination or, if you like, give it a caption that directs the viewer into your mental space at the time of shooting... That's why in other situations, it's a good deal more romantic to turn the lights down low, or even off. Let the brain pay its dues.